


Kick At The Darkness [Til It Bleeds Daylight]

by StarkAstarte



Series: Days of War, Nights of Love [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Doesn't Know Steve's Changed Yet, Letters Home From The Front, Longing, M/M, Men in love, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Trench Warfare, V-Mail, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-06 23:45:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1876998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarkAstarte/pseuds/StarkAstarte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky writes Steve letters from the Front. Letters he never sends. After he falls from the train, Steve finds them in the bottom of Bucky's kit bag back at camp. He reads them over and over again until they are in tatters. Until he is, too. When he falls, Agent Peggy Carter keeps them safe. Decades later, she returns them to the men to whom they belong. The men whose love was too big for paper to contain. But Bucky sure as hell tried.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. June 1943

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OwnThyself](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwnThyself/gifts).



[ ](http://www.google.ca/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&docid=LlppQLPabfuYOM&tbnid=D5nr7c6Xe79QXM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.skylighters.org%2Fencyclopedia%2Fvmail.html&ei=zkmyU7DoH82UyATv8oHQAQ&bvm=bv.69837884,d.aWw&psig=AFQjCNHdSxe8A0AiNUOT5M9XXdo7_Ll4vQ&ust=1404279621218982)

 

Dear Steve,

You know what, buddy, turns out I don’t like the army much. Betchya you ain’t too surprised hearing me say that. I don’t like being told what to do and when. Never did like that much. But I guess it makes things real simple in a complicated situation, and that ain’t nothing, is it. Out here, simple is good. Simple just might save you. For a little while, anyway.

The thing is, though, I ain’t even scared. Maybe that ain’t altogether right, 'cause other guys is plenty scared, and it makes what they’re doing so much braver than anything I done. I ain’t here to be brave. I’m just here to do what you wanted to do but couldn’t. I don’t know what that makes me, but brave ain’t it. Selfish, probably. Everything I ever done for you was for selfish reasons, and I can say that here ’cause you can’t stop me. It’s kinda a relief, to tell you the God’s Honest. You wouldn’t never let me say it before, so I’m saying it now, where you can’t even hear me. I can’t hardly hear myself over the racket. Whatever I say now, I say to the stars above and the bullets whizzing past my ear. Good enough, I figure, for anything I got to get off my chest.

You wanna know something else strange? I ain’t hardly been hungry since I got here. The rations ain’t even that bad—better’n the Bread Line back home, even though plenty of fellas complain loud and clear all day long. I don’t complain. I don’t eat much, neither. Maybe it’s ’cause eating ain’t much fun without you. You sure ain’t much of a cook, pal, but you always made everything interesting. A fella can even get to missing your ketchup-and-cracker sammies without even trying hard. We got ketchup and we got crackers out here, but it ain’t near the same at all. I know ’cause I tried it and it was so bad I spat it out and the rest of the fellas made funna me for being delicate.

The fighting part's real familiar. I feel like you and me were born to fight. Only now, even though I got the entire 107th at my back, without you here with me I fight alone. I fight every day like I’m already dead. I fight for you. To keep you safe, pal. My life for yours. It’s always been like that, Stevie. Every morning I wake up and your stupid face ain’t in the picture is both the best and worst part of my day. If you can figure out what that means, I guess I really did take all the stupid with me.

Gonna leave off now, Stevie. I got a job to do and I mean to do it proper. Like as if it was you doing it instead of me. That’s how I get through it, pal. I do whatever I think Steve Rogers’d do. So far so good. I might just make it outta this thing. But if I don’t, Stevie. If I don’t. I don’t even mind. The only thing I mind is not never seeing your ugly mug again. But I got that picture from Coney Island we got took that day last summer. You remember. The snap of the two of us you didn’t never even know I paid a nickel for. That huckster got me good. I’m sure glad he did. ’Cause now your face is with me wherever I go. And whenever I go, I’ll be ready. I’ll be taking you with me.

All the best, pal. And. I really. There are things I ain’t never gonna get to say, but that don’t mean I won’t be thinking ’em every minute til I don’t got nothing left between my ears to think with.

Bucky.


	2. July 1943

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky writes Steve a letter on his birthday.

[ ](http://www.google.ca/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&docid=LlppQLPabfuYOM&tbnid=D5nr7c6Xe79QXM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.metropostcard.com%2Fhistory1914-1945.html&ei=nEqyU43dLoWyyASr0YCYDA&bvm=bv.69837884,d.aWw&psig=AFQjCNHdSxe8A0AiNUOT5M9XXdo7_Ll4vQ&ust=1404279621218982)

Dear Steve,

A dugout ain’t the swellest place to spend the night, pal. You think that shithole in Red Hook’s bad. Well, it’s looking real ritzy from where I’m sitting, mud up to my ears and filling my boots. Hell, I got mud in places I ain’t never been dirty before, and that’s saying something. The mud ain’t even just dirt and water mixed. It’s fulla blood and spent shells. Shrapnel and I don’t know what the hell else. Guts. Eyeballs, for all I know. It’s so damn slippery, it sure as hell feels like guts ‘n’ eyeballs. Smells like it, too. It sure as hell don’t smell like flowers ‘n’ perfume out here. I smoke just to burn off the stink for a little while. It never lasts long. Some things reek forever. The war’ll come and go, but I bet the stink of this place’ll hang around forever, like one of them ghosts we usedta read about in magazines your ma’d’ve killed us for reading. Good thing she didn’t never know. Good thing she didn’t never figure on a lotta things we done, eh, pal? She’d’ve been praying 24/7. Like she already wasn’t, over you.

I’m scribbling this letter by the light of bombs being dropped on our heads. Looks like giant fireflies swarming around above us. It’s like we’re real small down here and can’t nothing catch us one until something does. If something drops from the sky with Bucky Barnes written on it smack-dab, ain’t nothing much a fella can do. The glare comes and goes, but I can see real good most’ve the time. The sky’s lit up like it’s your birthday. And that’s real ironic, ’cause you know what? It is. It _is_ your birthday today, pal. Happy quarter of a goddamn century. Think you’ll make it the rest of the way? Sure hope so, even though I sure as hell won’t. Even if I make it through this thing, I don’t think I got much’ve a chance at making it long past forty. From where I’m at, pal, forty looks damned good.

I make it to forty, you can throw me a goddamn swanky shindig at the Stork Club. Yuck it up real good. I’ll get so drunk I’ll go blind. Dance the Lindy with you til I pass out and you got to carry me home. Think you can manage that, pal? You got fourteen years to get ready. You’re bound to fill out some, we keep at it like before I left, training you up so’s you can come with me and get your head blown clean off, too. Maybe that training we done’ll finally come in handy for something worth the blood, sweat, and swears. I know you can do it, pal. You ain’t never let me down yet. You and me, the Stork Club, 1957. It’s gonna be a helluva year, Steve. A helluva goddamn year. Just you wait. Just you wait and see. We’ll win this war, and then it’s classy Manhattan nights all the way through til doomsday.

I wonder what you’re doing tonight. You sure as shit ain’t celebrating. I know you too good for that. Probably out there doing something real patriotic, like getting your ass handed to you on a garbage can lid, or something stupid like that. That’s the only kinda birthday present you understand. I guess getting seven kindsa shit kicked outta ya makes you feel alive, though, don’t it? And that ain’t nothing. That’s pretty much all there is. Feeling real alive until you ain’t. So give ’em hell for me, wiseguy—and I’ll give the Krauts the same. Tag-team effort, just like always. You and me, pal. To the end of the line.

Anyways, I better put this letter away and try getting some shut-eye. The racket’s starting to die down a bit. Enough for a one-eye-peeled kinda catnap at least. You clean yourself up as good’s you can (you know where the iodine is). Get some shut-eye yourself, and say hi to Brooklyn for me. Tell her from me her second-best guy misses her something awful. It takes a place like this to let you know the one you come from ain’t so bad after all. Red Hook’s a real looker, Steve, compared to here. You make sure and treat her right. I’ll be coming back for you both someday, just as soon’s I got all these Krauts licked. Make ’em say _uncle_ or whatever they say in Kraut-talk that means I give up.

Happy Birthday, kid. You figure out there’s anything I wouldn’t do, make sure and do it for me. You deserve it. Hell, there ain’t nothing you don’t deserve. I wish I could give it all to you. I wish I could give you everything you want on a silver platter bigger’n your whole body. Hell. Don’t that beat a garbage can lid any day of the goddamn week?

Be seeing you. Your best pal,

Bucky.


	3. August 1943

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky tells Steve what it's like getting shot.

[ ](http://www.google.ca/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&docid=LlppQLPabfuYOM&tbnid=D5nr7c6Xe79QXM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.destroyers.org%2FMemorabilia%2Fother%2Fv-mail%2520letter.htm&ei=xkqyU6P9KZaoyASm5IHwCA&bvm=bv.69837884,d.aWw&psig=AFQjCNHdSxe8A0AiNUOT5M9XXdo7_Ll4vQ&ust=1404279621218982)

Dear Steve,

First time I got hit with a bullet, I didn’t hardly feel it. It’s like getting sucker-punched real good. I guess you know what that’s like. It makes you real mad more’n anything. You can’t believe you was caught out unawares. You feel real dumb, like you’ve been walking around with your pants down around your ankles, and didn’t nobody bother letting you know. You feel like you’re one lucky sonuvabitch and you don’t hardly deserve it. They sent me back to England to get patched up proper, but by the time I got there and they shoved me in a bed, I was healed up good enough to turn around and come back. I didn’t even have time to write you. So this is me, writing to tell you how I got shot up but not enough to bite it and not enough to get sent back to Brooklyn. It’s got me feeling real strange, pal, ’cause you know it ain’t like me to do nothing halfways. I wake up with this feeling like maybe there’s something real important I forgot to do. But then I remember. I forgot to die. Sure hope I won’t remember.

Hospitals are worse than the front. They don’t tell you that, but it’s true. It’s too quiet. The sounds of fellas dying don’t never get drowned out by the ruckus of artillery. You lay there real still and just listen, 'cause there ain’t nothing else to do but wait to live or die, just like them. You don’t never know when your number’s up. Ain’t nobody never safe. Nobody but you, pal. And that’s the way I want it, see?

I ain’t scared, Steve. I just miss you. And that feels like being scared, sometimes. It feels just the same. Like as if I can’t hardly breathe. I guess you know what that’s like, too. I lay here in the dugout, shivering all night like you used to do, and it feels like I’m sleeping in my own grave. I just look up at the sky and wait for something to drop on my head big enough to cover me over. The thing that bothers me most about that is that they won’t never even tell you about me. You won’t never even know til you read my name in the lists. Sergeant James B. Barnes of Brooklyn, USA. That’s how you’ll see it. You won’t never even see the name you call me, pal. Ain’t that a kick in the teeth?

Me and this fella, Dugan. We got us an arrangement. He turns up his toes, I write his ma, even though she’ll get a letter from the army. He wants her to have something personal. I kick the can, Dum Dum writes you. So don’t worry pal. It’s all taken care of. Somebody’ll tell you about me, and he’ll use my name. The name you’ll remember when anybody else who ever knew me’ll forget. That’s the best inscription I can think of. My name. The one you called me. The one I’ll remember even after I get where I’m going after my life’s done and gone. I know that’s real morbid. I’m sorry about that. But it makes me feel a whole helluva lot better, to tell you the God’s Honest. Makes me feel settled. Like I know where I’m going just like I know where I’ve been, ’cause they’re both the same thing: straight back to you.

Heaven is real, I think. I know ’cause I been there. And you was there with me. Who knew heaven was in Red Hook, pal? Sure coulda fooled me. Now I know the truth. I ain’t never gonna forget it, neither.

You keep warm, Stevie. Make sure to eat more’n enough to keep a half-dead cat alive, or I’ll wanna know why. I think of you every day. Every goddamn day. I swear. I swear.

Bucky.


End file.
